Models Behaving Badly - Part 1: The Men

Gentle readers.  It is was great trepidation that I ask you to view the following photos.  Please understand that I do not post these for mere salaciousness nor for cheap puerile titillation.  No, never!  Indeed it pains me greatly to even broach this most disturbing aspect of human behavior - men behaving badly.  Oh the horror, THE HORROR!

I don't know what is more disturbing - the guy totally scamming these sweet, unsuspecting ladies or the fact that Larry the Lobster WASN'T some innocent victim of hunger-crazed models (see header pic and last year's post).  No, no, no. After I acquired the rest of this series on "Great Moments in Sportswear", I realized Larry was the perpetrator and that our models were simply recoiling from his lecherous advances!

For example.....

Dear me.  Here we have some totally creepy douchebagy guy using binoculars from, oh let's say all of 5 feet, to check out Colleen, Karen, and Kathy.  You can almost sense the uncomfortableness in their body language.  It's like they are thinking "Okay, geez, can we just get this shot over with already!" or "My agent is going to hear about this!" or "I hope they don't put some lame sub-header on this like us being a 'ship shape crew' or anything".  

Surely, dear readers, it simply can't get any worse......

It can and it does!  Can these guys be any more obvious?  Come on man, you have to be a little bit cool when checking things out!  And the sub-header "...and learning that a great backhand isn't the only way to impress someone on the court."  Everyone all together now "GROAN!!"  I mean it is like they went out of their way to be crude.

So these are all human males behaving badly.  Did Larry the Lobster have any other animal friends behaving lecherously towards our dear sweet models??

Yep.  He wasn't alone.  Looks like this guy is trying the "cute and furry" approach to check out these gals. However, based on how he is leaning forward, it looks like he is trying to get a better angle (so to speak). He ought better be careful or he might get clubbed with one of those putters!

As we all know, gophers - while seemingly innocent members of the family rodentia - are traditionally ill-behaved denizens of our nation's golf courses. For example...

Ahh, how cute!  NOT!!!!  Behold the destroyer of all that is good and decent, the corrupter of womanhood, the abomination that causes desolation (at least to golf courses)!  And to combat him, extreme measures must be taken!

Gopher Cong!

Huh?? Why include a pic of Lacey Underall (Cindy Morgan)?  Uhhh, well I can think of a couple of good reasons.  Wait a minute.  Now, your own Blogger Historian has fallen under the spell of men behaving badly. For shame, Michael, for shame!! 

Where, or where, does all this "men behaving badly" inexorably lead??

See what the gopher hath wrought!  The destroyer, the evil one, cackles in his lair at his terrible handiwork!  Those golfer gals in pic 4 should have become "gopher gals" taken care of him when they had the chance!!

"I never slice!"  Could be a self portrait.  Ahhh heck, nothing that a few beers can't fix!  Why fight it?  I guess I'm just another regular guy behaving badly after all.

Hey everyone, Have a great and Happy Thanksgiving!!

Yeah, you there gopher.  We've got our eyes on you!!  Just stay away from our woman folk and be glad you're not a turkey this week!!!!

Scintillating Sleepwear - Part 3: Let's Get Winter Ready!

Now that the chill of winter is descending upon us, it may be a good time and check out how the big book catalogs kept everyone all cozy warm in 70s sleepwear!

And what can chase those winter chills away better than thermals?  Here we have Kay, Karen, and friends looking great and snugly warm!  Let's face it, thermals are timeless winter sleepwear!

I don't know about keeping the winter chill away, but these ladies are certainly heating things up with the long and lean look!  And when anyone mentions Nylon Tricot, the first thing that comes to mind is naturally "fashionably feminine".

Colleen and friends are definitely ready for Old Man Winter in these "winterskin" thermals. "Think Snow" indeed!  They are smoking hot enough to melt any icy blast! 

Looks like these gals are certainly happy to have the warm sleepers!   Yes, of course having beautiful models in sleepwear posed around bar stools in an otherwise completely blank set is so common.  I see it all the time!

"Skirting the Issue"?  I think not!  What I just noticed about catalog sleepwear pics is how similar they tend to be.  You get a quintet or so of smashingly attractive models, set them in various states of repose, have them all face the camera (which is unusual for catalog shots itself) and  presto!, catalog sleepwear pic!

I had to include this pic for one reason and let me state it "I hate it when they had a great shot of Kathy and they did it in BLACK AND WHITE!!!!"  ARRRGGGHHHH!!!  It's enough to make me see red!!

Did I mention red?

So much for the black and white stuff.  We've changed that with some eye-popping red here, and these lovely ladies look VERY ready to face a cold winter night.  But isn't the "true love" reference with the color red more appropriate for Valentine's Day?  My take is that the caption writer was smitten by ALL these gals (and who could blame him?)

"Cozy Cover-Ups" says it all for Kathy and Karen.  These things definitely look warm.  Let the cold winter weather begin!

Program note: As you have probably noticed, I have been posting on Thursdays; however, with Thanksgiving next week, I'm going to publish next week's post on Tuesday.  See you then!

Random Goodness: Shirts, Skirts, and Assorted Miscellany - Part 1

As you know, I love to pick out the odd photo from catalogs, magazines, and ads of the 70s have some good natured fun with it.  However, there a number of pics from that era that were, well, rather normal but still worth taking a look see.  That's why I started this new category "Random Goodness" to highlight these pics  Also, I wanted something with more positive energy to offset the rather negative vibe of the "Random Weirdness" (1) category.

And what can generate more positive energy than shirts, skirts, and assorted miscellany! (and yes I know that they are technically blouses, not shirts, but hey, that's doesn't fit with the alliteration).

Wow, that's a good way to start off this series.  I don't know how random it is, but Kathy and friends are certainly bringing the goodness!

Kay and Karen get in on the act in some really snazzy shirts and skirts.  They even come with matching sweaters!

Yep, "Fresh and Flippy", that's what I think about when I think of skirts, yeah right.  I love the "puffy shirt" look on Kay.  Arrrr, matey!

You know, the more I look at this pic, the more it looks like it was taken in a parking lot?  I know Aldens was at the low end of the hierarchy of mail order catalogs, but still.

"Where are the shirts or the skirts here?" you ask.  Well, the acrylic rib-knit pullovers fall into "assorted miscellany".  The cool hat that Kathy is wearing is pretty miscellaneous also.  Is she trying to join a motorcycle gang or what?

Something to the right of these ladies must be VERY interesting because they are all looking over there in unison.  The ascot on the lady on the left is a nice, if miscellaneous, touch!

Let's end the first post in this category with a really nice pic of Kathy and Kay.  You gotta love the weird little collars on Kay's shirt.  And yes, Kay is technically not wearing a skirt, but instead some sort of funky pantsuit that looks like a skirt - a little bit of miscellany, and a little bit randomly weird.  Perhaps, this category should instead be called "Random Weirdness Lite".


footnotes:

(1) Don't worry, the Random Weirdness category isn't going away.  Oh no, no, no!  There is plenty of randomly weird stuff yet to explore!

Random Weirdness: Wig Out!

Well, ya'll probably knew this post was coming sooner or later.  Based on some of my previous comments, you probably know that I'm not all that big of a fan of wigs, but they were very popular back in the 70s. And as a historical blogger I am compelled to cover all the offerings of the 70s catalogs.  Sooooo, here we go!

"Wigs that go to your Head".  Hey I think it should be "Wigs that go ON your Head".  Get your prepositions straight will ya!! I guess my problem with wigs is this: why? (1)  I mean Kathy and Dottie still look cute here and all that, but, again I ask: Why?  After all, they were super good looking in their own hair, why mess with that?

Okay this is weirding me out now.  100% human hair!! and down in the lower right, we have Kathy getting ready to put on a wig.  It looks like torture to me!

Instead of natural hair, you could have gone with the all synthetic wigs from Sears.  They even brag about how they hold their shape no matter what.  Wow, isn't modern chemistry amazing!  However, shouldn't they be called "The Uncrushables"?

The catalogs often promoted their wigs with well known personalities.  Here Alrene Dahl lends her signature to a Sears line of wigs.  She was a movie star in the 1950s, who, ah hem, reportedly had an interesting personal life.  Perhaps they were trying channel that with the wigs.  You know, put on a wig and voila!, you can live vicariously as a movie star!

So enough with putting them on, how did these wigs work out for some of our models?

All three models in wigs!  Maybe the catalogs would put a model in wigs so that they could have the one person model different looks - sort of two different models for the price of one?  Or maybe, putting on wigs was a fun way of pretending to be someone else.  Sort of like what kids do now with tattoos, but a lot less permanent.

Once again, we have three of our models in wigs.   They kind of look like Cold War era spies or something, but I don't think they are fooling anyone here.  They are way too good looking to go incognito!

Wigs really could change the way a gal looked.  For example....

Here we have Kathy as a both a brunette and a blond.  You can really see the difference.  It is like an entirely different woman!  Why would a gal want to do that?  Ohhh, now I get it, never mind...

So did the wigs always work out?

Uhhh, no.


footnotes:

(1) Please understand that I completely understand wearing wigs due to medical conditions.  That is not what I'm talking about here.